Vanguard Party of the Proletariat [Archive]

View Full Version : Vanguard Party of the Proletariat

Kubehiz

22nd November 2012, 09:48

22nd November 2012, 12:43

"Vanguard" might not mean what you think it means. When Lenin wrote WITBD, he was merely repeating orthodox Marxist positions (as defended by the "Marxist center" of the Second International, of which the Bolsheviks were a part), that our class needs to organise itself politically as a class. This happens within the context of fighting for working class hegemony, which crystallised in Russia as a fight against the Tsarist dictatorship and for democracy.

"Vanguard" in this context then just means "the most politically aware layers of our class, the worker-leaders on the ground who make the difference when in matters".

A while back I created a blogpost on this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6435) in which I explain the issue more in depth. I also refer to Lenin Rediscovered: 'What is to be done?' in context for an up to date (and less politically biased) translation of the original Russian text. There is also a new usergroup about that book here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1050).

Brosa Luxemburg

22nd November 2012, 14:32

I would say that the vanguard party is essential for many reasons. Other organs of proletarian class rule (such as the factory councils, trade unions, etc.) suffer from certain deficiencies. Factory councils are concerned primarily about the specific factory in which they operate. Trade Unions are concerned primarily about the trade they are "assigned" to. The Soviets, while concerned more about the working class as a whole, allow all the proletariat to participate regardless of class consciousness. Communists are not workerists. We fight for the liberation of the entire class, not the interests of individual workers who, existing in bourgeois society, can hold very reactionary views. A vanguard party, restricted to the most revolutionary and class conscious, can overcome the deficiencies that show themselves in other organs of proletarian class rule.

Skyhilist

22nd November 2012, 15:05

I think that there are certain laws that people who participated in the revolution would need to make in order to ensure that capitalists wouldn't screw things up post-revolution. Other than basic laws made by a very large group of revolutionaries however (to ensure the success of the revolution), I think that local communities should be able to decide their own ways of life, rather than needing a vanguard party to do everything for them. In my estimations though, I think it'd take at least a few million to cause a revolution in my country (the USA), so it would hardly be vanguardesque compared to Stalinism, Leninism, etc.

Avanti

22nd November 2012, 17:27

the vanguard party

is just a not-so-clever

very unstealthily way

to legetimize

the rule of academic intellectuals

over the masses

claiming they know better what you think

than you do

nobody

who doesn't know

how it is to starve

how it is to be ill without any healthcare

how it is to live in prisons

should take any political responsibility

whatsoever

ever

TheOther

22nd November 2012, 17:52

True, I still don't understand why there is so much group-narcissism, party-narcissism and sectarianism in the left-wing of all countries of the world. Why don't all leftists anarchists progressive people and poor just join together into super big parties in all countries of the world, put away their ideology for some years. And join together into leftist-fronts in each country of the world. But i guess because of the narcissistic and specially the EGO-PARADIGM of mankind that is a bit impossible. I guess humans would have to evolve toward an ALTRUIST-PARADIGM for all anarchists, stalinists, maoists, marxist-leninists, ultra-leftists, progressives and independent poor people to join into single fronts in most countries of this world

Hello again, all,

So for the past week I've been off work because of my bronchitis and I was just interested in seeing the different viewpoints on this matter. I have just finished re-reading What is to be Done? By Lenin And also Rethinking the Russian Revolution by Edward Acton and my question for you all is:

Is it necessary for a vanguard of the proletariat?

I know what my fellow Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists and the ilk will have to say on the topic, which is 'yes', but I would also like to know why and what you think it entails. What are the positives and negatives of the vanguard? Should the vanguard only represent the active proletariat or should it also entail anyone willing to support the revolution (Menshevik line, peasantry, bourgeios or any associate)? In summary, is a vanguard essential? If so why? And how can the vanguard be a good or bad thing? (For example, negative could be 'promoting elite intelligentsia seperating party from workers' and a positive could be 'creating an active, mobile and serious centralised party in which revolutionary activities can be organised')

Currently my position is that yes, a vanguard is essential, but my mind, as always, is open to change, so please comrades, debate, discuss and contribute if you could. :) Thank you

Astarte

22nd November 2012, 18:23

While I do support the necessity of a vanguard party I also recognize that the germ of statism is inherent in it. The goal of communism, of course, is the end of classes and the state, but Leninism and vanguardism purports that the way we get there is by way of the proletarian semi-state, as theoretically advanced in State and Revolution.

The problem is revolutionary regimes are almost always birthed during situations of crisis, which gives reactionary layers which have found their way into the vanguard party ample opportunity to establish themselves as a new ruling clique while obscuring the accumulation of their factional power by way of forwarding the idea of the necessity of the strictest of "democratic centralism" even after the crisis situation has passed.

Conversely, the absence of any kind of vanguard party is even more disastrous since the absence of any real centralized party management of post-revolutionary affairs leave the new revolutionary authority too disorganized and unprotected in the face of counter-revolution.

And hence we have one of the major problems and contradictions which the whole Marxism-anarchism split itself revolves around...

Let's Get Free

22nd November 2012, 18:28

Thirsty Crow

22nd November 2012, 18:49

IThe Soviets, while concerned more about the working class as a whole, allow all the proletariat to participate regardless of class consciousness. Communists are not workerists. We fight for the liberation of the entire class, not the interests of individual workers who, existing in bourgeois society, can hold very reactionary views.
The Soviets are unitary organs of the working class as a whole, and the very fact of their creation needs to be interpreted as a manifestation of an important degree of class consciousness among workers. While the party needs to act and argue incessantly for workers' power and communism, it cannot posit itself as the arbiter of class consciousness as that road most probably leads to substitutionism which is a dead end.

Comrade Jandar

22nd November 2012, 19:59

Marxaveli

22nd November 2012, 20:36

Let's Get Free

22nd November 2012, 20:55

Marxaveli more or less hit the nail on the head.

GoddessCleoLover

22nd November 2012, 22:11

Some type of "vanguard" entity might be necessary to lead the revolution. OTOH given the tragic history of 20th century socialist revolutions it seems necessary and proper to examine the defects of these revolutions and how the "vanguard" came to substitute its leadership for that of the proletariat. Revolutionary leftists ought to really come to grips with this issue.

Astarte

23rd November 2012, 04:57

The problem is, Vanguardism doesn't just repress bourgeois or counter-revolutionary movements, it also ends up doing the same thing to perceived threats also, and it is too easy for perfectly good revolutionaries who may not agree with certain politics or policies of the Vanguard to be wrongfully accused of treason or counter-revolution. The Vanguard ends up acting in its own interests instead of the interests of the proletarian. We need a mass party and counter-culture to bourgeois ideology that consists of the proletarian itself, not a set of professional revolutionaries (many of which come from petty-bourgeois backgrounds) to carry out the revolution on the workers behalf. All it does is result in a new State and class structure where the workers end up just as oppressed as they were under Western capitalism. I respect Lenin as an intellectual, revolutionary, and I think in general he meant well, but he was wrong about quite a few things also, namely that most of the workers could never be smart enough to be revolutionary. This smacks of elitism, and it is something every contemporary Marxist should avoid. Admittedly, sometimes I feel the same way Lenin does when I encounter extremely brainwashed and apolitical people, but I remember that growing up under bourgeois society is the cause of this ignorance. I was the same way once - if I can change, so can others.

I think you are mostly correct, but there are a few things here. In a way you make it sound like the event of the vanguard essentially coming to act of its own accord and in its own interests is solely a result of petty bourgeois elements in the party ... note that Stalin and most of Stalin's closest associates themselves were not of upper petty bourgeois backgrounds, but rather they mostly accused the Trotskyists and the Left Opposition of "Labor Aristocracy" essentially based around the correct notion that the Trotskyists were indeed from upper petty bourgeois backgrounds while the Stalinists were from proletarian or lower peasant or very low petty bourgeois backgrounds ... thus, I think a "purely"-proletarian-in-background vanguardist party easily could turn into a bureaucratic state apparatus with interests divorced of the proletariat and other oppressed classes under certain post-revolutionary conditions.

We should remember that the vanguard party is in essence an alliance between the oppressed CLASSES - that means though the proletariat is the motor force of the social revolution because of its hegemonic position in day to day production - it does have class allies - the small peasantry (farmers which own small plots of land) and the pettiest of the petty bourgeoisie (those petty bourgeoisie that rely solely on their own labor power, and do not receive a wage, or exploit wage labor; i.e. essentially operate on a pre-capitalist economic mode) - when these class allies are ridden rough-shod over, that is usually when and where the vanguard party begins to also forget about the proletariat and have separate interests from the rest of society.

Brosa Luxemburg

23rd November 2012, 05:29

The Soviets are unitary organs of the working class as a whole, and the very fact of their creation needs to be interpreted as a manifestation of an important degree of class consciousness among workers. While the party needs to act and argue incessantly for workers' power and communism, it cannot posit itself as the arbiter of class consciousness as that road most probably leads to substitutionism which is a dead end.

I agree with you completely, and I don't understand how my post shows any differently. The creation of soviets would be a sign of high class consciousness which should be very much respected, but it doesn't mean that all members of the proletariat are revolutionary or class conscious.

Jimmie Higgins

25th November 2012, 14:55

I'm not a fan of the "vanguard party" in the Leninist sense of the word. Every vanguard party that has ever gained power has used gerrymandering, intimidation, imprisonment and murder to suppress opposition and makes sure it stays relevant through brute force. How could it not? The whole premise of centralism is that a central authority dictates policy to everyone else, so no matter how democratically chosen it is it has to enforce its line and stifle dissent that makes this too difficult, which, in a revolutionary situation, there is bound to be a lot of.Well I agree with all of that except that that's not the Leninist sense of the concept. This is how CPs and some Maoist and some trot groups have opperated - and anarchists and other tradditions have also ultimately acted in these ways too despite being ideologically opposed to that. For the CPs specifically though - they had centralism, but for purposes that were essentially a negation of the kind of thing Lenin argued for. Rather than an organic "vanguard" of people engaged in various areas of class struggle coming together to develop (democratically) a better sense of the class struggle terrain and then implement a coordinated responce (centralism) based on all that local struggle and experience - they became organizations following the lead of a disconected Comintern whose interests were not in how to help workers locally fight, but how to defend the interests of the USSR. It was necissarily top-down and undemocratic because of this. A "Leninist" party however, needs both democracy and the ability to be coordinated - we aren't taking on a bunch of autonomous bosses ultimately, but a system with highly centralized forces which are pretty good at dividing and conquoring.

Socialism can't be created by decree or by force by a minority. It can only be implemented by the majority of the people taking over the economy (taking over their workplaces, streets and estates) and reorganizing them as they see fit.And the point of organizing the organic vanguard is to nuture and coordinate efforts to advocate just what you wrote above.

GoddessCleoLover

25th November 2012, 15:27

Isn't is possible for there to be more than one revolutionary vanguard entity? In Russia in 1917 the Bolsheviks were the revolutionary vanguard, but IMO their emphasis upon singularity may have been an error. When the Bolsheviks banned factions at the 1921 Party Congress power was further centralized into the hands of the Politburo and the General Secretary, resulting in a tyrannical dictatorship. To my mind some type of proletarian political pluralism is necessary to counter-balance the type of centralization that derailed the Russian Revolution.

pluckedflowers

25th November 2012, 15:56

Actually, I would be happy if someone could refer me to passages in which Lenin specifically speaks of the vanguard as something that exists within the proletariat. Because my impression from reading "State and Revolution" was that when he spoke of a Proletariat Vanguard, it was in reference to the proletariat as such representing a vanguard class in relation to other segments of society (specifically, the peasantry). That was the impression I got, anyways, and it makes some sense in terms of Russian society at the time. But I'm not expert on Lenin, so I'd be happy to be corrected.

Blake's Baby

25th November 2012, 16:07

I agree with you completely, and I don't understand how my post shows any differently. The creation of soviets would be a sign of high class consciousness which should be very much respected, but it doesn't mean that all members of the proletariat are revolutionary or class conscious.

So? It's not up to you to tell the working class it's doing it wrong.

No, scratch that: it's up to you to tell the working class you think they're doing it wrong, but it's it's not up to you to shoot them when they ignore you.

The revolution is the task of the working class. Not the party. It's not the party's property. We think we're theoretically clearer than the majority of the working class at the moment, that doesn't give us a right to direct things. It means we have a duty to argue, but no right to control.

GoddessCleoLover

25th November 2012, 18:46

Spot on. The proletariat has the right to rule and no self-appointed vanguard ought to hijack the proletarian revolution for its own purposes/benefit.

Blake's Baby

25th November 2012, 19:48

And it does that, through keeping control of the workers' councils comrade...

Avanti

25th November 2012, 20:32

Let's Get Free

25th November 2012, 20:38

Well I agree with all of that except that that's not the Leninist sense of the concept. This is how CPs and some Maoist and some trot groups have opperated - and anarchists and other tradditions have also ultimately acted in these ways too despite being ideologically opposed to that. For the CPs specifically though - they had centralism, but for purposes that were essentially a negation of the kind of thing Lenin argued for. Rather than an organic "vanguard" of people engaged in various areas of class struggle coming together to develop (democratically) a better sense of the class struggle terrain and then implement a coordinated responce (centralism) based on all that local struggle and experience - they became organizations following the lead of a disconected Comintern whose interests were not in how to help workers locally fight, but how to defend the interests of the USSR. It was necissarily top-down and undemocratic because of this. A "Leninist" party however, needs both democracy and the ability to be coordinated - we aren't taking on a bunch of autonomous bosses ultimately, but a system with highly centralized forces which are pretty good at dividing and conquoring.

Right, but if the vanguard has any sort of political power, things will go sour, as history has well demonstrated. Thus any vanguard can only lead through fundamental knowledge and intellect, but they must have no political autonomy over the proletariat. After the revolution, unions, councils and civil assemblies can be developed through direct democracy, and the appointed delegates can be recalled at any time if they are seen as unfit or detrimental to the revolutions cause.

Brosa Luxemburg

25th November 2012, 21:08

So? It's not up to you to tell the working class it's doing it wrong.

No, scratch that: it's up to you to tell the working class you think they're doing it wrong, but it's it's not up to you to shoot them when they ignore you.

Okay, hold on. I never even hinted that "I would shoot any proletariat that don't agree with me" or "that the vanguard party should tell the proletariat what to do", etc. I never once mentioned in my posts the organizational structure between the party and other organs of proletariat class rule.

The revolution is the task of the working class. Not the party. It's not the party's property. We think we're theoretically clearer than the majority of the working class at the moment, that doesn't give us a right to direct things. It means we have a duty to argue, but no right to control.

^Again, I agree. What I am saying is that there should be an organ of proletariat class rule made up of only the most revolutionary and class conscious, but I never once mentioned the organizational structure between the party and, say, the soviets, etc. I am not attempting to make a blueprint either.

Blake's Baby

25th November 2012, 23:27

Okay, hold on. I never even hinted that "I would shoot any proletariat that don't agree with me" or "that the vanguard party should tell the proletariat what to do", etc. I never once mentioned in my posts the organizational structure between the party and other organs of proletariat class rule.

^Again, I agree. What I am saying is that there should be an organ of proletariat class rule made up of only the most revolutionary and class conscious, but I never once mentioned the organizational structure between the party and, say, the soviets, etc. I am not attempting to make a blueprint either.

Fine - I disagree.

The revolution is the work of the working class, not "only the most revolutionary and class conscious" of the working class. Who decides who they are? You? 'The Party'? Any organisation that seeks to take power from the workers' councils - such as any group that seeks to only regroup "only the most revolutionary and class conscious" workers in order to establish a minority rule - is by definition counter-revolutionary.

EDIT:

Look, there's a name for the organisation that regroups "only the most revolutionary and class conscious" workers - it's The Party. And it's not an organ of 'class rule', that's the job of the workers' councils. The Bolsheviks tried to run Russia with 'only the most revolutionary and class conscious' workers (ie the Party) in control of the state and if you think the result was worth fighting or even arguing for, then be my guest. I suspect most workers don't want USSR 2.0 however.

Astarte

26th November 2012, 00:15

who

is going to protect

the post-revolutionary culture

from the vanguard?

It is probably painfully obvious from my posts that I straddle the fence between Leninism and anarchism ... It is uncomfortable on this fence... but the discomfort seems to keep one more awake and vigilant, at least.

My point is, any armed defense of the revolution will essentially mean the creation of a state apparatus. Even the CNT, when it was a force fighting against fascism was a kind of "state apparatus" as it was using class based coercion to fight counter-revolutionaries ... at different points in history more or less centralization of the revolutionary forces is necessary to stave off counter-revolution ... So, while I agree Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the right thing when political power was centralized by the Party in 1918 due to the crisis of the civil war, I also realize this was a slippery slope to despotic Party rule ... as, of course, the atmosphere of "crisis" was artificial prolonged by the Stalinists in order to usurp total power within the Party and in turn over all of society - the question is - would the collapse of the revolution by 1921 or 1922 and probably and then more than likely fascism have been preferable to Stalinism? I do not think so.

Vigilance, and an honest evaluation of political history, I feel, is the only way of avoiding a potential "USSR 2.0".

Avanti

26th November 2012, 00:24

It is probably painfully obvious from my posts that I straddle the fence between Leninism and anarchism ... It is uncomfortable on this fence... but the discomfort seems to keep one more awake and vigilant, at least.

My point is, any armed defense of the revolution will essentially mean the creation of a state apparatus. Even the CNT, when it was a force fighting against fascism was a kind of "state apparatus" as it was using class based coercion to fight counter-revolutionaries ... at different points in history more or less centralization of the revolutionary forces is necessary to stave off counter-revolution ... So, while I agree Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the right thing when political power was centralized by the Party in 1918 due to the crisis of the civil war, I also realize this was a slippery slope to despotic Party rule ... as, of course, the atmosphere of "crisis" was artificial prolonged by the Stalinists in order to usurp total power within the Party and in turn over all of society - the question is - would the collapse of the revolution by 1921 or 1922 and probably and then more than likely fascism have been preferable to Stalinism? I do not think so.

Vigilance, and an honest evaluation of political history, I feel, is the only way of avoiding a potential "USSR 2.0".

at least

then we should have

300 parties

in an alliance

all with equal strength

one party

just means stagnation

and tyranny

if leadership is needed

so be

but leadership

comes from below

and not from dead prophets

and not from

party bureaucracies

Blake's Baby

26th November 2012, 00:24

Astarte

26th November 2012, 03:06

The Party not usurping the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a guarantee against the failure of the revolution (the revolution may still fail to spread internationally) but if the Party does usurp the power of the workers' councils, then this is not 'the slippery slope' it is actually the counter-revolution in operation.

Even if the Party still gets rid of private property and private accumulation of capital? I think it is more of a form of proletarian Bonapartism than outright Bourbon restoration...

GoddessCleoLover

26th November 2012, 03:10

Doesn't the former lead to the latter?;)

Astarte

26th November 2012, 03:15

Well... I would not argue that it is the "counter-revolution" in and of itself, since the production and property has still been socialized ... it is just that the Party has become an oligarchical ruling caste over society itself - capitalist property relations are no more - I do not adhere to the theory of state capitalism - the only way I could accept that the political oligarchy of the CPSU(B) was outright "counter-revolution" would be from the position that it was some sort of bureaucratic-collectivist ruling class - but it certainly was not a return to capitalist property and capitalist economic relations as there was no private accumulation of capital that could be used by private individuals in the manner that capitalism had and has always functioned ...

GoddessCleoLover

26th November 2012, 03:19

I see where you are coming from, but have you considered the Soviet Union was neither a workers' state nor a bourgeois state, neither fish nor fowl?

Astarte

26th November 2012, 03:49

I see where you are coming from, but have you considered the Soviet Union was neither a workers' state nor a bourgeois state, neither fish nor fowl?

Oh, absolutely. Have you ever heard of the "AMP" theory - it is a terrible name, but sometimes it seems to me that referring to the USSR as a qualitatively higher and more developed "AMP" state may actually be the most accurate way of describing it.

Here is the description of AMP from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiatic_mode_of_production

Check out this old post I made on my thoughts of AMP and the USSR http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2227896&postcount=11

Critics will say that the theory of the Asiatic mode of production is "Eurocentric", or that the mode occurs in places other than Asia ... Personally, I think it is more "Eurocentric" to believe that every civilization, the world over has followed the European model of slavery to feudalism to capitalism ... also, modern theorists of the "Asiatic mode of production" know very well that this economic mode has occurred pretty much globally in the past.

GoddessCleoLover

26th November 2012, 03:53

Thanks for the 411. Will have to check it out. What is your opinion of Hillel Tikhtin's non mode of production theory?

Astarte

26th November 2012, 03:55

Thanks for the 411. Will have to check it out. What is your opinion of Hillel Tikhtin's non mode of production theory?

I think I am about 95-98% on board with that theory, I watched the lecture a couple of times about a year ago and can't remember the one or two bones I had found to pick over the course of the lecture, but over all I found it to be practically spot on.

Blake's Baby

26th November 2012, 14:54

Even if the Party still gets rid of private property and private accumulation of capital? I think it is more of a form of proletarian Bonapartism than outright Bourbon restoration...

The Party doesn't get rid of private property and the private accumulation of capital.

The working class organised in the workers' councils get rid of private property and the private accumulation of capital.

Any group that assumes control from the working class has usurped the revolution and must necessarily embody the counter-revolution. That's what the counter-revolution is - the attempt to take power from the working class, whether that's by White generals or the 'proletarian party'.

Doesn't the former lead to the latter?;)

No, sometimes it leads to Bonaparte, or Stalin, or the Kims.

Grenzer

26th November 2012, 15:20

The working class organised in the workers' councils get rid of private property and the private accumulation of capital.

You seem to be operating on the assumption that councils are the only form that the proletarian dictatorship can take; a ridiculous assertion for which there is absolutely no evidence at all.

Councils have been a form of proletarian dictatorship within a specific historical context, but not much more. Councils can just as easily take a bourgeois form, as they did in Titoite regime.

Blake's Baby

26th November 2012, 19:29

Everything called Trevor is human, not everything human is called Trevor. What's your point?

Of course councils can enact bourgeois policies. In Germany, they handed back power to the SPD. In South Africa they organised the exclusion of black workers.

But without the workers' councils there is no revolution. I didn't claim that they were the only necessary condition for revolution, but they are one of the necessary conditions. It is through the workers' council form (in which the working class organises the economy, which is the primary necessity in the reconstruction of society - we are Marxists after all, material conditions come first) that the working class organises its dictatorship. Claiming it can do it through other forms is idealism. What other form regroups the whole working class, and allows it control production/distribution? Workers' councils allow the working class to organise itself, as itself, at the point of production. 'Job done'.

bad ideas actualised by alcohol

26th November 2012, 19:35

Astarte

26th November 2012, 22:17

The Party doesn't get rid of private property and the private accumulation of capital.

The working class organised in the workers' councils get rid of private property and the private accumulation of capital.

I can understand the idea that it is a statist system - but it is not capitalistic in any way. If you categorize the USSR as "state-capitalist" and say that since the state controlled or "owned" all property and was "accumulating capital in the capitalist sense" then you might as well call Pharaonic Egypt, Incan Peru, or the Qin Dynasty "capitalistic" as well. It is just bad theory and poor analysis to consider the USSR as a "capitalistic" system of any kind. The Party as a ruling class relied on collective property from which advantages over that collective property were derived from political power connections within the state bureaucracy, not the privately accumulated pools of capital of individuals. It was very much like ancient bureaucratic total managerial states - and really nothing like modern capitalism at all.

Any group that assumes control from the working class has usurped the revolution and must necessarily embody the counter-revolution. That's what the counter-revolution is - the attempt to take power from the working class, whether that's by White generals or the 'proletarian party'. There is a difference between Bonapartism and Bourbonism, and it is based on the hegemonic mode of economy, not the level of political centralization or decentralization ... I can understand why you would come to such a poor analysis based on your belief that the USSR was somehow "state-capitalist" though...

l'Enfermé

26th November 2012, 22:30

Blake's Baby says that there was no revolution in France in 1871...

...and then he calls himself a "Marxist". Comrade, have you heard of The Civil War in France (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)? You Left-Communists are a silly lot! You certainly have a thing for scolding me because I don't think that Mai 1968 was a part of a revolution period, but then you come out and say things like this. Hmm...

Blake's Baby

27th November 2012, 08:56

My dog is named Trevor.

You call your dog Trevor, I'm pretty sure your dog doesn't. I think the analogy holds good (though all analogies, like all dogs, have a breaking point).

I can understand the idea that it is a statist system - but it is not capitalistic in any way. If you categorize the USSR as "state-capitalist" and say that since the state controlled or "owned" all property and was "accumulating capital in the capitalist sense" then you might as well call Pharaonic Egypt, Incan Peru, or the Qin Dynasty "capitalistic" as well. It is just bad theory and poor analysis to consider the USSR as a "capitalistic" system of any kind. The Party as a ruling class relied on collective property from which advantages over that collective property were derived from political power connections within the state bureaucracy, not the privately accumulated pools of capital of individuals. It was very much like ancient bureaucratic total managerial states - and really nothing like modern capitalism at all...

You've never read any Engels, have you? Read up on 'the national capitalist' in 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' (specifically Ch. 3), it describes the ministry-corporation economy of the USSR pretty exactly.

There is a difference between Bonapartism and Bourbonism, and it is based on the hegemonic mode of economy, not the level of political centralization or decentralization ... I can understand why you would come to such a poor analysis based on your belief that the USSR was somehow "state-capitalist" though...

I take a class analysis - the working class, working for wages, was having its surplus labour exploited by a bureacratic elite that ran the state combines. That's the situation Engles describes in the 1880s as increasingly the way the capitalist economy and the state become fused together. Engles never uses the term 'state capitalist' but the processes he's describing are what happened in the USSR and the nationalised industries of the west.

Blake's Baby says that there was no revolution in France in 1871...

...and then he calls himself a "Marxist". Comrade, have you heard of The Civil War in France (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm)? You Left-Communists are a silly lot! You certainly have a thing for scolding me because I don't think that Mai 1968 was a part of a revolution period, but then you come out and say things like this. Hmm...

L'Enferme, you talk shit of the highest order.

1 - I have never said that 1871 was not a proletarian revolution, I disputed your apparent claims that 1830 and 1848 were proletarian revolutions, but you later clarified your point to say that they were not, and I agreed with you, though as this was a different thread, I'm not sure of the relevance here;
2 - I agreed with you that May 1968 was not a proletarian revolution either.

Or do you mean that because I think the workers' councils are necessary for the revolution, and there were no workers' councils in the Commune, that I think the Commune wasn't a revolution? In which case, I'm going to have to say that my formulations are inexact. The workers' councils are a necessary condition for the successful prosecution of the revolution in the period of decadent capitalism. The Commune took place before the period of decadent capitalism, it failed, and as Marx said (letter to Domela Nieuwenhuis) that the Commune was hardly 'socialist' '...and nor could it be'. Even so, I think that the details of the Commune show that the organisation of the working class was tending towards what we would see as workers' councils.

Astarte

28th November 2012, 01:00

You've never read any Engels, have you?
Actually, I have read quite a lot of Engels. Does not agreeing with the theory of state-capitalism somehow imply unfamiliarity with Engels? That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Read up on 'the national capitalist' in 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific' (specifically Ch. 3), it describes the ministry-corporation economy of the USSR pretty exactly.
The problem is Engels was not talking about a state where all individual private property in land and production ceased to exist, he was referring to some sectors of the national economy becoming property of the bourgeois state apparatus, and in passages like this:

If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

It actually seems more like he is referring to an occasion similar to fascism in which special layers of national bourgeois statists command all aspects of the productive process with the purpose of maintaining bourgeois social relations while at the same time marginalizing or "reducing" the majority of the capitalist class from the actual decision making processes of production but also leaving private property and private capital accumulation untouched. Hence why the capitalists are reduced to "pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, gambling on the Stock Exchange", etc - rather not anything that could be compared to Stalinism - as the private accumulation of capital was not a function of the Stalinist elite in the process of production. Ruling class privileges were not derived from the accumulation of private capital but special state grants based on political rank and connections in the Party. Where there was accumulation of currency there was no real official outlet for it since it could not be used as capital because the hegemonic economic mode of society was in no way capitalistic - this is also why a sprawling black market was able to develop, continue and to keep growing and growing until it became so large that it became something of a dual economic power that was able to eventually displace and then ultimately consume official collectively property - which is why gangsterism is also so prevalent in the Russian capitalist economy today. If it were the case that the USSR was state capitalist you would have expected for it to be the norm, rather than the exception, for Party members to have had vast private accumulations of wealth stashed away so that they were better positioned to convert themselves into actual capitalists after the dismantling of the Soviet system; instead it was mostly those who had been operating on the unofficial, but nascent black market that were able to gain the upper hand in the new capitalist system.

Now you may argue "but the state collectively accumulated capital based off of the exploitation of wage labor so - ah-hah! - the bureaucracy must be a cabal of 'state-capitalists'!" ... While workers in the USSR did receive a wage, the wage was really not very much comparable in terms of its practical use in the economy to the wages of workers in any capitalistic society. And the wealth exploited by the managerial bureaucracy cannot be considered "capital" in any sense of the way the word is associated with "capitalism".

Though proletarians rarely have the chance to do this, in a capitalist economy the possibility, how ever small it is, of using their accumulated wages to invest them into a private enterprise or become a bourgeois themselves does exist - the medium through which one has the ability to change their role in the process of production and in turn change their class in capitalist society is capital, since the way individuals receive, handle and use capital, in a capitalist society determines their role in the production process and in turn dictates what kind of role in production they are able to play - that is why it is "capital"ism. In the USSR, and especially under Stalin, conversely, private accumulations of currency could only be used to reinvest into the state apparatus - there was no private use for "capital" - only the ability to re-inject it into collective holdings, and thus the determinant of class in the USSR came from one's political power or political connections within the Party apparatus, and not one's economic power ie accumulated capital. You might be able to become some kind of arch-managerial party bureaucrat like the "Soviet millionaires" - but you were far from a "capitalist".

I take a class analysis - the working class, working for wages, was having its surplus labour exploited by a bureacratic elite that ran the state combines.
But your whole reasoning for determining the USSR was "capitalist" is based around it's economy seeming to have only one aspect of capitalism inherent in it. Dialectics teach that aspects of the old will always be inherent in the new. This is one of those cases. A form of exploitation, which when honestly analyzed, appears to be a cross between the "Asiatic" form of collectively exploiting labor and the wage labor of capitalism was the hegemonic mode of labor exploitation in the USSR. It is incorrect to say simply because of the presence of this exploitative semi-corvee, semi-wage labor mode, which exoterically and superficially resembles classical capitalist wage labor (as does wage labor in ancient Rome for that matter) that the USSR was a bourgeois society. "Bourgeois" or capitalist society implies very specific things, most significantly: A. INDIVIDUAL PRIVATE PROPERTY with legal titles and deeds over and in land and the means of production B. The ability of individuals in society to, theoretically, use accumulated capital to PRIVATELY exploit wage labor and to C. Collect the surplus of that wage labor into PRIVATE ACCUMULATIONS OF CAPITAL. None of the above existed in the Soviet Union as an hegemonic or official mode of economy.

To quote Marx in 'Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations'
Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property. In fact, however, its foundation is tribal or common property, in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains within itself all conditions of production and surplus production I could just as easily say I feel the USSR fits the description of this type of society on a qualitatively higher level. The accumulation of wealth by a ruling class DOES NOT necessitate capitalism, not even when the mechanism for extraction of that wealth resembles that of modern capitalism.

That's the situation Engles describes in the 1880s as increasingly the way the capitalist economy and the state become fused together. Engles never uses the term 'state capitalist' but the processes he's describing are what happened in the USSR and the nationalised industries of the west.

Engels, Socialism: Utopian & Scientific

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces.In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
Notice when he mentions national capitalism he also even says "individual capitalists". Capitalism is a high "individualistic" type of economy and state society - calling the USSR capitalistic in any sense, again, and for reasons profusely illustrated above, is just plain inaccurate, and seeks to apply the word "capital-ism" to a statist economic mode which does not rely on the private and individual accumulation of capital. The Soviet state did not sanction and perpetuate private accumulations of capital; hence no capitalism, no state-capitalism.

Blake's Baby

28th November 2012, 09:29

Actually, I have read quite a lot of Engels. Does not agreeing with the theory of state-capitalism somehow imply unfamiliarity with Engels? That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

It is a bit of a stretch, so why have you implied it?

Claiming that 'the Soviet Union was nothing like modern capitalism at all' is also a bit of a stretch and implies a lack of familiarity with Engels, which i why I asked.

...
The problem is Engels was not talking about a state where all individual private property in land and production ceased to exist, he was referring to some sectors of the national economy becoming property of the bourgeois state apparatus...

In other words, he was referring to a situation similar to the SU, where the entire economy national economy became the property of the state apparatus.

...
It actually seems more like he is referring to an occasion similar to fascism in which special layers of national bourgeois statists command all aspects of the productive process with the purpose of maintaining bourgeois social relations while at the same time marginalizing or "reducing" the majority of the capitalist class from the actual decision making processes of production but also leaving private property and private capital accumulation untouched. Hence why the capitalists are reduced to "pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, gambling on the Stock Exchange", etc - rather not anything that could be compared to Stalinism - as the private accumulation of capital was not a function of the Stalinist elite in the process of production. Ruling class privileges were not derived from the accumulation of private capital but special state grants based on political rank and connections in the Party. Where there was accumulation of currency there was no real official outlet for it since it could not be used as capital because the hegemonic economic mode of society was in no way capitalistic - this is also why a sprawling black market was able to develop, continue and to keep growing and growing until it became so large that it became something of a dual economic power that was able to eventually displace and then ultimately consume official collectively property - which is why gangsterism is also so prevalent in the Russian capitalist economy today. If it were the case that the USSR was state capitalist you would have expected for it to be the norm, rather than the exception, for Party members to have had vast private accumulations of wealth stashed away so that they were better positioned to convert themselves into actual capitalists after the dismantling of the Soviet system; instead it was mostly those who had been operating on the unofficial, but nascent black market that were able to gain the upper hand in the new capitalist system...

Not really. If by 'Party members' you mean the rank-and-file members of the party, I wouldn't expect that at all. If you mean the higher-up members of the party then yes, that's what did happen.

The argument about private accumulation is a red herring.

... Now you may argue "but the state collectively accumulated capital based off of the exploitation of wage labor so - ah-hah! - the bureaucracy must be a cabal of 'state-capitalists'!" ... While workers in the USSR did receive a wage, the wage was really not very much comparable in terms of its practical use in the economy to the wages of workers in any capitalistic society. And the wealth exploited by the managerial bureaucracy cannot be considered "capital" in any sense of the way the word is associated with "capitalism"...

Yes, it really can. It was capital, and therefore can be considered to be capital.

...Though proletarians rarely have the chance to do this, in a capitalist economy the possibility, how ever small it is, of using their accumulated wages to invest them into a private enterprise or become a bourgeois themselves does exist - the medium through which one has the ability to change their role in the process of production and in turn change their class in capitalist society is capital, since the way individuals receive, handle and use capital, in a capitalist society determines their role in the production process and in turn dictates what kind of role in production they are able to play - that is why it is "capital"ism. In the USSR, and especially under Stalin, conversely, private accumulations of currency could only be used to reinvest into the state apparatus - there was no private use for "capital" - only the ability to re-inject it into collective holdings, and thus the determinant of class in the USSR came from one's political power or political connections within the Party apparatus, and not one's economic power ie accumulated capital. You might be able to become some kind of arch-managerial party bureaucrat like the "Soviet millionaires" - but you were far from a "capitalist"...

The argument that you could live off the labour of others and amass a fortune but you're not a capitalist because you don't own shares is to mistake a technical aspect of capitalism for an essential aspect of capitalism. Capitalism depends on wage labour and commodity production. Waged workers produced commodities, the controllers of the industrial combines those workers produced for received priviliges derived from the surplus labour of the workers. That is capitalism.

...
But your whole reasoning for determining the USSR was "capitalist" is based around it's economy seeming to have only one aspect of capitalism inherent in it...

Two aspects of capitalism, the two aspects of capitalism (and the only two) that make capitalism capitalism and not anything else. So, if something has all of the necessary qualifications of capitalism it is capitalism.

... Dialectics teach that aspects of the old will always be inherent in the new. This is one of those cases...

Historical materialism teaches us that the stage after capitalism will be communism. Was Russia - or the world - communist in the mid-20th? If it wasn't, then either historical materialism or your understanding of the dialectic is wrong. Which do you think it is?

... A form of exploitation, which when honestly analyzed, appears to be a cross between the "Asiatic" form of collectively exploiting labor and the wage labor of capitalism was the hegemonic mode of labor exploitation in the USSR. It is incorrect to say simply because of the presence of this exploitative semi-corvee, semi-wage labor mode, which exoterically and superficially resembles classical capitalist wage labor..

What? Surely you claimed at the beginning of your argument that it didn't resemble capitalist wage labour. Is this 'dialiectics' again?

... (as does wage labor in ancient Rome for that matter) ...

Yes, I agree, there was wage labour in Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece even (along with commodity production, trading in markets etc). Though this can perhaps be seen as 'capitalist behaviour' it isn't a capitalist system because this is not the generalised mode of production - unlike the Soviet Union of course, which was a developed capitalist economy (if an inefficient one).

...that the USSR was a bourgeois society. "Bourgeois" or capitalist society implies very specific things, most significantly: A. INDIVIDUAL PRIVATE PROPERTY with legal titles and deeds over and in land and the means of production B. The ability of individuals in society to, theoretically, use accumulated capital to PRIVATELY exploit wage labor and to C. Collect the surplus of that wage labor into PRIVATE ACCUMULATIONS OF CAPITAL. None of the above existed in the Soviet Union as an hegemonic or official mode of economy...

None of those are necessary for capitalism. The essence of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value through wage labour during the production of commodities. That's it.

...To quote Marx in 'Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations' I could just as easily say I feel the USSR fits the description of this type of society on a qualitatively higher level. The accumulation of wealth by a ruling class DOES NOT necessitate capitalism, not even when the mechanism for extraction of that wealth resembles that of modern capitalism...

The quote from Marx you refer to seems to have disappeared. So I don't know what you want to say here.

I agree that the "accumulation of wealth by a ruling class DOES NOT necessitate capitalism", but unfortunately disagree with the rest, "when the mechanism for extraction of that wealth resembles that of modern capitalism", because it is modern capitalism, then that means it's capitalism. A duck, that looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and swims in water, is still a duck, even though you try to tell me it's a fish.

...

Notice when he mentions national capitalism he also even says "individual capitalists". Capitalism is a high "individualistic" type of economy and state society - calling the USSR capitalistic in any sense, again, and for reasons profusely illustrated above, is just plain inaccurate, and seeks to apply the word "capital-ism" to a statist economic mode which does not rely on the private and individual accumulation of capital. The Soviet state did not sanction and perpetuate private accumulations of capital; hence no capitalism, no state-capitalism.

Yes, he says that the bureaucratic state prevents the 'encroachments... of individual capitalists'. Are you claiming that the Soviet Union did not prevent the encroachments of individual capitalists? It seems to me that the policy of the Soviet state is exactly what Engels is describing. Odd that you should think it's anything else really.

So, maybe it's not that you haven't read much Engels. Maybe you just haven't understood any of the Engels you've read. I'm going to quote the bit just after the bit you emboldened;

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

How does that not relate exactly to the Soviet state?

Astarte

28th November 2012, 23:14

It is a bit of a stretch, so why have you implied it?

...Haha, what? Really? Are you kidding me? The way this exchange began was you asking "You have never read any of Engels, have you?" What else could that quip have been directed towards if not my disagreement with the theory of state-capitalism?

Claiming that 'the Soviet Union was nothing like modern capitalism at all' is also a bit of a stretch and implies a lack of familiarity with Engels, which i why I asked.
Oh, I see now that you were just posturing above, and you clearly understand and actually do believe that by disagreeing with state capitalism as a theory for the mode of economy of the USSR one is contradicting everything Engels ever wrote. No problem - I get how you roll.

In other words, he was referring to a situation similar to the SU, where the entire economy national economy became the property of the state apparatus. I disagree.

Not really. If by 'Party members' you mean the rank-and-file members of the party, I wouldn't expect that at all. If you mean the higher-up members of the party then yes, that's what did happen.
Those who were able to convert themselves to capitalists were able to do so by thriving off of the black-market which developed as I mentioned in my last reply - Brezhnev's daughter's involvement in the illicit trade is a good example of the upper echelons of the Party dealing in the unofficial and non-hegemonic black-market - the fact that this market was not hegemonic though, and that collective property had to be dismantled in the first place should make it plain enough to show that capitalism was not the hegemonic mode.

The argument about private accumulation is a red herring.
This pretty much sums up your whole argument: you can say something is capitalism all you want; it does not make it so. You can say something is a red herring all you want; it does not make it so.

Yes, it really can. It was capital, and therefore can be considered to be capital.

It was a form of wealth. It was not capital. It did not play the same function as capital plays in a capitalist economy.

The argument that you could live off the labour of others and amass a fortune but you're not a capitalist because you don't own shares is to mistake a technical aspect of capitalism for an essential aspect of capitalism.
That is a gross oversimplification of my argument. The bureaucracy obviously was collectively living off of the labor of others. The key though is that they did so on a collective basis through their political status in society. After Khrushchev fell from grace, precisely because his past status as a master of society relied on political or Party connections, he was forced to not only live in a normal apartment but was also made to relocate several times; he was without any actual capital or property. A true "state-capitalist" would have private accumulations they collected while using state power to do so - in this way they would not then be at the mercy of collective property - this is why it was feared Mubarak would slip away in 2011 after he was ousted - because he used his truly state-capitalistic power to retain capital even after removed from state power. The point is, capitalism entails private accumulation, not just the medium of wage exploitation.

Capitalism depends on wage labour and commodity production. Waged workers produced commodities, the controllers of the industrial combines those workers produced for received priviliges derived from the surplus labour of the workers. That is capitalism.
The problem is the party were "controllers" and not "owners", which you even acknowledge - hence why they were a class of total managerial despots, and not capitalists.

Two aspects of capitalism, the two aspects of capitalism (and the only two) that make capitalism capitalism and not anything else. So, if something has all of the necessary qualifications of capitalism it is capitalism.
We have at least found the germ of where your confusion stems from: the Party did not privately own the means of production as the capitalist did, even though something akin to wage labor was used as the medium of exploitation - so I continue to contend, it absolutely was not capitalism.

Historical materialism teaches us that the stage after capitalism will be communism. Was Russia - or the world - communist in the mid-20th? If it wasn't, then either historical materialism or your understanding of the dialectic is wrong. Which do you think it is?

Really? What happened to the socialist transitional period? the stage right after capitalism is communism? That is new to me.

What? Surely you claimed at the beginning of your argument that it didn't resemble capitalist wage labour. Is this 'dialiectics' again?
Sometimes it helps to re-read things you don't understand the first time...

Yes, I agree, there was wage labour in Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece even (along with commodity production, trading in markets etc). Though this can perhaps be seen as 'capitalist behaviour' it isn't a capitalist system because this is not the generalised mode of production - unlike the Soviet Union of course, which was a developed capitalist economy (if an inefficient one).
Right, it was not the hegemonic mode in Rome and Greece - nor was it in the USSR, since, as I have illustrated, property was the collective property of all of society, even if a managerial class had unofficially usurped it - this still does not change the status of the property as being collective - you really should read Marx's Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations - you will understand that collective property can entail a ruling class.

None of those are necessary for capitalism. The essence of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value through wage labour during the production of commodities. That's it.
... and the private ownership of the means of production.

The quote from Marx you refer to seems to have disappeared. So I don't know what you want to say here.

This is the quote from Marx, do you not believe it is correctly attributed...?

Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property. In fact, however, its foundation is tribal or common property, in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains within itself all conditions of production and surplus production[ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Blake's Baby;2540271]agree that the "accumulation of wealth by a ruling class DOES NOT necessitate capitalism", but unfortunately disagree with the rest, "when the mechanism for extraction of that wealth resembles that of modern capitalism", because it is modern capitalism, then that means it's capitalism. A duck, that looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and swims in water, is still a duck, even though you try to tell me it's a fish.
Is a duck-bill platypus a duck or does it just have a beak that looks like a duck's? Is a bird a dinosaur?

Yes, he says that the bureaucratic state prevents the 'encroachments... of individual capitalists'. Are you claiming that the Soviet Union did not prevent the encroachments of individual capitalists? It seems to me that the policy of the Soviet state is exactly what Engels is describing. Odd that you should think it's anything else really.
I don't find anything odd about disagreements in theory - I think it is constructive. Of course the USSR prevented the encroachments of individual capitalists - so much so that even after collective property had been usurped by the bureaucracy it took until 1991 for the full dismantling of collective property.

So, maybe it's not that you haven't read much Engels. Maybe you just haven't understood any of the Engels you've read. I'm going to quote the bit just after the bit you emboldened;
I think it is more a case of you reading Engels esoterically; you seem to be finding what you want to find; reading into things that just are not there.

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
First of all, in 1880, when Engels wrote this ... all "modern states" were capitalist... again, "the capitalist relation is not done away with" private ownership of the means of production was fully done away with in favor of collective property in which no one had actual ownership over in the USSR - It seems Engels is describing something close to fascism as I mentioned in my last post, or even something closer to the state-capitalism of the Mubarak regime. Or any such circumstance in which PRIVATE CAPITALISTS accumulate capital that can be used as capital by way of holdings of a state apparatus which still is operating under the hegemonic economic mode of private pools of capital exploiting wage labor.

Blake's Baby

29th November 2012, 02:03

...Haha, what? Really? Are you kidding me? The way this exchange began was you asking "You have never read any of Engels, have you?" What else could that quip have been directed towards if not my disagreement with the theory of state-capitalism?...

Well, obviously your belief that Engels wasn't describing something very like the Soviet Union is what I was referring to.

...
Oh, I see now that you were just posturing above, and you clearly understand and actually do believe that by disagreeing with state capitalism as a theory for the mode of economy of the USSR one is contradicting everything Engels ever wrote. No problem - I get how you roll...

'Everything'? Meet Professor Hyperbole Strawman, he is made of straw and lives up the ass of Astarte, where he lectures on the science of exegeration.

No, Engels wrote a lot of stuff that has no particular bearing on the nature of the capitalism of the USSR, but he also wrote a certain amount that does, including the relevant chapter of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific that I'm talking about.

...
I disagree.

OK. I'd argue that disagreement is based on seeing what you want to see not what's there though, it seems pretty obvious to me that the situation described by Engels is very similar to the situation that pertained in the Soviet Union, to the point where it's difficult for me to understand why anyone reading the one and looking at the other wouldn't also see it, so perhaps you'd like to explain exactly what doesn't apply.

...
Those who were able to convert themselves to capitalists were able to do so by thriving off of the black-market which developed as I mentioned in my last reply - Brezhnev's daughter's involvement in the illicit trade is a good example of the upper echelons of the Party dealing in the unofficial and non-hegemonic black-market - the fact that this market was not hegemonic though, and that collective property had to be dismantled in the first place should make it plain enough to show that capitalism was not the hegemonic mode...

The black market is hardly hegemonic in any national economy, are you going to claim that none of them are capitalism?

...
This pretty much sums up your whole argument: you can say something is capitalism all you want; it does not make it so. You can say something is a red herring all you want; it does not make it so...

Sure, me saying something doesn't make it true, but something being true, I'd argue, is a good reason for saying it.

...
It was a form of wealth. It was not capital. It did not play the same function as capital plays in a capitalist economy...

It was a capitalist economy, and it was wealth in a capitalist economy, so, it played the role of wealth in a capitalist economy.

You're right that there wasn't exactly much private investment - there didn't need to be, there was plenty of public investment to ensure that surplus value could be extracted, and the 'elite' got to do a lot of corruption (as well as just general perks) that led to them having lavish lifestyles of the back of the working class.

...
That is a gross oversimplification of my argument. The bureaucracy obviously was collectively living off of the labor of others. The key though is that they did so on a collective basis through their political status in society. After Khrushchev fell from grace, precisely because his past status as a master of society relied on political or Party connections, he was forced to not only live in a normal apartment but was also made to relocate several times; he was without any actual capital or property. A true "state-capitalist" would have private accumulations they collected while using state power to do so - in this way they would not then be at the mercy of collective property - this is why it was feared Mubarak would slip away in 2011 after he was ousted - because he used his truly state-capitalistic power to retain capital even after removed from state power. The point is, capitalism entails private accumulation, not just the medium of wage exploitation...

No it doesn't. Pretty sure you just made that bit up. Capital accumulation can be by individuals or groups. That was Engels' point.

...
The problem is the party were "controllers" and not "owners", which you even acknowledge - hence why they were a class of total managerial despots, and not capitalists...

Legal nicities. The fact that they were not legally entitled to the profits doesn't mean 1-there were no profits and 2-they didn't get the profits. In all class societies, the law is a fiction in the service of the ruling class. the legal definitions of property don't matter, who that property serves matters.

...
We have at least found the germ of where your confusion stems from: the Party did not privately own the means of production as the capitalist did, even though something akin to wage labor was used as the medium of exploitation - so I continue to contend, it absolutely was not capitalism...

Don't know where this obsession with private ownership comes from, it's not necessary for capitalism.

...

Really? What happened to the socialist transitional period? the stage right after capitalism is communism? That is new to me...

Maybe you read should Marx as well. There is no 'socialist transitional period', that was Stalin making a mistake about what Lenin wrote about a mistake he made in reading Marx.

I think what you're thinking of is 1 - the dictatorship of the proletariat, which Lenin described as 'state capitalism made to serve the whole people', a capitalist stage when the working class has taken power but not yet managed to completely overthrow capitalism; or possibly 2 - the lower stage of communism, in which all property everywhere (worldwide) has been collectivised, but production has not yet managed to be organised to fulfill all human needs; or 3 - the higher stage of communism, in which the principle of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' has been established.

...

Sometimes it helps to re-read things you don't understand the first time...

Yes. We agree on something.

You climed it was 'nothing like modern capitalism at all' and then one post later said it 'resembled modern capitalism'. Care to explain the dichotomy (read as many times as you like, I'll wait).

...
Right, it was not the hegemonic mode in Rome and Greece - nor was it in the USSR, since, as I have illustrated, property was the collective property of all of society, even if a managerial class had unofficially usurped it - this still does not change the status of the property as being collective - you really should read Marx's Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations - you will understand that collective property can entail a ruling class...

Engels' point in Ch.3 of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is that capitalism does not cease to be capitalism just because the property is held collectively. I'm quite aware that collective property entails a ruling class, as in the Soviet Union, where it was a capitalist ruling class that administered collective (state) property.

...
... and the private ownership of the means of production.
...

Nah. Commodity production and wage labour are the distinguishing features of capitalism. Property can be individual or collective.

...The quote from Marx you refer to seems to have disappeared. So I don't know what you want to say here.

This is the quote from Marx, do you not believe it is correctly attributed...?

Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property. In fact, however, its foundation is tribal or common property, in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains within itself all conditions of production and surplus production[ http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htmNothing to do with incorrect attribution, when I came to reply it didn't appear in my quoting of you that's all, keep your hair on. I might imply that you can't read or don't know what you're talking about, but I wouldn't be so mean as to imply that you were lying about things.

Don't see any mention there of wage labour and commodity production. nor any mention of trading on the world market, which the USSR did. So, no, that doesn't look much like the USSR, though I can see why anyone who doesn't like the idea that the USSR was capitalist would seize on it.

...
Is a duck-bill platypus a duck or does it just have a beak that looks like a duck's? Is a bird a dinosaur?..

If you like, you could examine how ducks grew from dinosaurs, but I could also say that the duck-billed platypus doesn't quack - nor is it a fish. A duck-billed platypus that quacks, and has wings, is a duck.

...

I don't find anything odd about disagreements in theory - I think it is constructive. Of course the USSR prevented the encroachments of individual capitalists - so much so that even after collective property had been usurped by the bureaucracy it took until 1991 for the full dismantling of collective property...

So your argument here is, because the Soviet government did what Engels said the 'national capitalist' does, the Soviet government can't be the 'national capitalist'?

...
I think it is more a case of you reading Engels esoterically; you seem to be finding what you want to find; reading into things that just are not there...

I think it's more the case that you're reading it idiotically, not seeing what is plainly there.

...
First of all, in 1880, when Engels wrote this ... all "modern states" were capitalist... again, "the capitalist relation is not done away with" private ownership of the means of production was fully done away with in favor of collective property in which no one had actual ownership over in the USSR - It seems Engels is describing something close to fascism as I mentioned in my last post, or even something closer to the state-capitalism of the Mubarak regime. Or any such circumstance in which PRIVATE CAPITALISTS accumulate capital that can be used as capital by way of holdings of a state apparatus which still is operating under the hegemonic economic mode of private pools of capital exploiting wage labor.

'The capitalist relation' does not refer to private ownership, it refers to commodity production by wage labour. These are the essentials of capitalism, not private ownership which existed in all previous forms of class society too. Unless you think that every form of economy before 1917 was capitalism, of course, in which case, it would be pointless for me to continue this.

Astarte

29th November 2012, 03:13

I actually wrote a long reply, but I decided to throw it out and not post it. You have not convinced me of state-capitalism in the USSR by any means, but you have caused me to re-evaluate some of my arguments and assessments of class in the USSR ... that was actually a fairly constructive exchanged, thanks.

Blake's Baby

29th November 2012, 03:20

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 03:27

Getting back to the issue of the vanguard party of the proletariat. In one sense, vanguard political leadership seems descriptive of reality and perhaps a necessary component to a struggle for social revolution. As a matter of logic, some workers will become politically and philosophically engaged sooner rather than later.

The 20th century revolutionary left has made a fetish of the singular vanguard party to the detriment of building an actual workers' movement. Prior to the 20th century the politically active worker was seen as a cadre by virtue of her or his activism, but the M-Ls and Trotskyists have distorted the cadre concept and by so doing have created a vanguard-worker duality that is absent from Marx's body of work.

Astarte

29th November 2012, 03:27

Wow!

Errm, good, I'm glad it helped - sorry, just a bit surprised. Glad you found it constructive, and really it doesn't matter that you haven't come round to my way of thinking, the point isn't to 'win' after all but if the exchange has helped to clarify things - that's a positive thing!

I'll make sure I read up on 'Pre-capitalist Economic Formations', as you think it has important insights into this.

To tell you the truth, I have been confused for a long time over whether collective property can yield classes or not - there are examples in very early state history that seem like it can - like Incan Peru for one, the Pueblo, or the Chagga - again though, the "ruling layers" could actually just be a "clique or caste", because there is no real private property. It just leads me to question my position of calling the Party an actual class - haha... I am slipping back into deformed-worker's state orthodox Trotskyism or something close it it seems like and it does not feel good.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 03:30

To tell you the truth, I have been confused for a long time over whether collective property can yield classes or not - there are examples in very early state history that seem like it can - like Incan Peru for one, the Pueblo Indians, or the Chagga - again though, the "ruling layers" could actually just be a "cliche or caste", because there is no real private property. It just leads me to question my position of calling the Party an actual class - haha... I am slipping back into deformed-worker's state orthodox Trotskyism or something close it it seems like and it does not feel good.

Check out some different theories. Economist Hillel Tikhtin has some interesting theories on the Soviet mode of production.

Trap Queen Voxxy

29th November 2012, 03:40

Is it necessary for a vanguard of the proletariat?

No, if by 'vanguard party' you mean some self-serving, centralized, political organization committed to the idea that in order for a political position or ideology to win people's support, it needs to effectively brainwash them into thoughtless automatons which are herded like cattle.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 03:45

No, if by 'vanguard party' you mean some self-serving, centralized, political organization committed to the idea that in order for a political position or ideology to win people's support, it needs to effectively brainwash them into thoughtless automatons which are herded like cattle.

Why a single "vanguard"? If there were two or three vanguard parties they could serve to make sure that one party doesn't take over and establish a dictatorship.

Raúl Duke

29th November 2012, 03:47

Hello again, all,

So for the past week I've been off work because of my bronchitis and I was just interested in seeing the different viewpoints on this matter. I have just finished re-reading What is to be Done? By Lenin And also Rethinking the Russian Revolution by Edward Acton and my question for you all is:

Is it necessary for a vanguard of the proletariat?

I know what my fellow Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists and the ilk will have to say on the topic, which is 'yes', but I would also like to know why and what you think it entails. What are the positives and negatives of the vanguard? Should the vanguard only represent the active proletariat or should it also entail anyone willing to support the revolution (Menshevik line, peasantry, bourgeios or any associate)? In summary, is a vanguard essential? If so why? And how can the vanguard be a good or bad thing? (For example, negative could be 'promoting elite intelligentsia seperating party from workers' and a positive could be 'creating an active, mobile and serious centralised party in which revolutionary activities can be organised')

Currently my position is that yes, a vanguard is essential, but my mind, as always, is open to change, so please comrades, debate, discuss and contribute if you could. :) Thank you

I'm not a Leninist, but here's my opinion...

The vanguard is not necessary for the revolution to occur per se (i.e. the February revolution occurred without one, it was mostly spontaneous), but if we view the "vanguard" as being some/most/all the ideological pro-rev people (i.e. the radical left) than during the revolutionary period they can inject into/agitate for revolutionary ideas/ideology into the revolution by disseminating the info to the working class, who would be more open to those ideas in this societal setting, and proposing said ideas within worker councils, etc as equal worker-members; thus in a way one can view this as 'consolidating' (by providing ideas/schema/framework of how the new order should be) the revolutionary society and a step to "destroy" and stop the old capitalist order from re-arising organically.

But I do not suggest a "vanguard party" coming in and taking power in a centralized (i.e. held primarily by this self-described "advanced sector or workers") manner "in the name of the proletariat." This is the mistake the Leninists did in the October Revolution that eventually led to the USSR which collapsed due to internal contradictions, as by holding power in a centralized manner among only a small section of the proletariat will change their class-position to something outside/different from the remainder of the proletariat. Repeating the same formula will not lead to different results, I think that's foolish. Political and Economic power needs to be had in a decentralized manner diffused across to all workers.

GoddessCleoLover

29th November 2012, 15:36

Raul Duke makes a number of excellent points. Would just like to add that proletarian democracy is an essential ingredient in building socialism and avoid the errors of the Soviet path. Assuming arguendo that Lenin favored internal party democracy, the DotP requires that all proletarians, not just party members, democratically exercise political power.

Trap Queen Voxxy

30th November 2012, 23:11

Why a single "vanguard"? If there were two or three vanguard parties they could serve to make sure that one party doesn't take over and establish a dictatorship.

That's silly and there doesn't really need to be some structured, centralized "Party" or "Parties" either.

GoddessCleoLover

1st December 2012, 02:20

Jimmie Higgins

4th December 2012, 11:11

What is silly about the notion of multiple parties checking the power of each other? Perhaps I haven't articulated it well, but a multi-party system would achieve the type of de-centralization that you advocate.

I think in all likelyhood in the post-USSR world, a new revolutionary movement would actually include several organizations which represent different groups of class fighters, (the vanguard) who begin to coordinate - even if they keep their own identities.

But I think it would be wrong to see this set up as a way to avoid some of the problems in the past. For one thing, the Bolsheviks did not intitially intend a one-party state, this situation developed through the course of events. On the other hand, had the CNT in Spain actually carried their actions and the actions of the revolutionaries towards a confrontation with the Popular Front's attempts to demobilize workers and created worker's power out of the worker controlled areas, they also wouldn't have been able to have a "multi-party" influence because aside from maybe allying with some small groups or independant revolutionary Marxists and Trotskyists, all other class organizations were in support of Republican rule and the preservation of privite property. In fact part of the problem in Spain was that eventually the vanguard forces were too open to other parties which in effect represented non-working class interests.

So in brief, I think some of this discussion has been too focused on the form of organization and not the class content. One party of the organized vanguard or a networking of organizations dedicated to smashing the old state and helping workers realize their own control of society, matters less than the class power backing these forces. A vanguard will only be a proper vanguard if they have an organic connection to class forces and struggle and have earned the trust of the broader class movements... but the base of the power of any vanguard are those class forces from below. So the CNT had this at points, but some political problems in dealing with historical conditions lead them to ally with forces dedicated to preventing worker's power and so the CP eventually had to smash the actual power from below behind the CNT by evicting communes and attacking organizations as "Trotskyist" and exaccuting induvidual fighters. In Russia, the civil war and material problems led to demoralization and dysfunction in urban areas and so the Bolsheviks began substituting for the class, began repressing parties representing pesant interests, but then eventually themselves filled the class void by representing the emerging interests of the petty-bourgeoise beurocrats.

Jimmie Higgins

4th December 2012, 11:15

That's silly and there doesn't really need to be some structured, centralized "Party" or "Parties" either.Then by what means do revolutionary workers organize and coordinate their own set of interests and priorities and tactics? There are always other formations dedicated to other class interests who are organized and pushing their answers to social problems and trying to convince workers that they should support X reforms or whatever as a way forward - why are revolutionaries supposed to sit that process out?

Blake's Baby

4th December 2012, 11:17

What is silly about the notion of multiple parties checking the power of each other? Perhaps I haven't articulated it well, but a multi-party system would achieve the type of de-centralization that you advocate.

Parties shouldn't have 'power' anyway.

Come the revolution I really don't see it just being the 'marxists' and the 'anarchists' in the workers' councils. I'd expect that there would be dozens of groups all claiming to be revolutionary (and most not being) arguing this way and that. Any group that advocated a single-party state under its control would I suspect rapidly find itself arrested.

AmericanMarxist

6th December 2012, 00:27

Along with ideological struggles, a vanguard party or several allied in a popular front are a force militarily. Look at the CNT in Spain during the civil war, organized, armed and spread ideology.

subcp

23rd December 2012, 04:40

The chaos of a global conflagration would necessitate the 'most advanced' workers to combine on an international level; it's difficult to imagine the level of confusion and day to day uncertainty such a conflict would have on everyone's lives (such as following a deeper capitalist crisis than the one in 2007-2008). Pannekoek had a conception of the party as an educator, a way for workers, on an international level, to disseminate pro-socialist/communist propaganda. The KAPD saw the party as both an educator and a means for coordination of the most socialist-conscious workers to combat counter-revolutionary influences and play an active role in pushing revolution forward/defending communist positions, not as an agent of taking power for itself in the name of the proletariat. If we follow the commonly held idea that workers will be prompted to act in their own interest by the crisis of economic forces, they will create class organs like the councils and committees on their own; Germany is instructive on the purpose of a Party (this is perfect expression of the need for an International; to fight against the waverings of the working class when confronted with not just the going beyond the state, but in forcibly overthrowing capitalist social relations and not handing power back to those who would dismantle their revolutionary organs).

Counter-revolution would come from those claiming to 'defend the gains' of the next revolution, just like the last ones. Worker management of the economy, labor vouchers/more 'democratic' currency, direct democratic election of representatives, etc. would probably be popular ideas all leading back to capitalist restoration, in a modified form. Fighting for communist positions in the workplace and neighborhood committees and worker's councils all over the planet is where the party is necessary, that's its primary reason for existence.